Airport searches are worse

National security letters

To those engaged in such a clamor over the massive collection of phone records constituting an invasion of their privacy, I would ask them to consider the following: With a billion new bits of such data a day, it has to be obvious that

human eyes could only look at a tiny fraction of that huge universe.

And, the few records actually accessed are only if there is a known terror connection (“Lawmakers briefed on NSA programs,” June 12) and that can only be done under a legal court sanction. No content is available, so the government is not going to know about your Aunt Suzy’s secret sauce recipe.

Now contrast the hue and cry over the NSA with the reality that we have all been grudgingly accepting of the serious breaches of our privacy when the TSA rightfully inspects our person and all of our personal effects every time we fly. I believe both processes are warranted for our security, but the phone stuff is nothing compared to what we live with at the airport.

Bill Leonard

Del Mar Heights

President Obama’s defense of mass telephone surveillance is completely bogus. It’s good, if true, that the National Security Agency isn’t listening to the content of everybody’s calls. Nevertheless, by tracking who calls whom, the program abuses the right of assembly. It lets the government map out every connection we make. That capability will inevitably be abused to persecute those whose legitimate political activity happens to be inconvenient to somebody in power. Protesters, advocates for peace, transparency, labor and human rights, even environmentalists at odds with powerful interests are all potentially at risk. Mass surveillance, even if it only uses metadata, makes perilous the peaceable political agitation without which our democracy will fail.

William F. Avrin

San Diego

Edward Snowden is neither traitor nor hero. He’s a “red herring” designed to take the heat off President Obama and (Attorney General) Eric Holder.

Snowden only released an overview of the program that has been in effect since 1978. He has not given any specifics. This is the first “scandal” of the Obama administration that the left/Democrats have not circled the wagons around Obama but rather condemning it with faint outrage.

Snowden himself is out admitting to the “leak” and acting self-assured and that prosecution is not his concern. Obama/Holder were on the national hot seat and directly involved with the IRS mess, whereas, they are not directly involved in the NSA revelations. This is another cover-up with a new twist. If only the Obama administration could run the country as well as it can cover up its illegal screwups!